The ongoing X and Elon Musk Transgressions Thread

[Fuzz]

Originally Posted by MoneyGuy

If I didn’t know better I’d say that Musk wants Twitter to go under, but why pay $44 billion for the opportunity? I think he bought Twitter to support Trump but destroying it isn’t helping his cause. I’m confused.

He made a really poor snap decision last year to buy it, that's it. Once he realized how dumb it was, he tried to get out, but because he waived all conditions he stood no chance, which is why he bailed on the court case.Realizing he did in fact own Twitter, he figured his best bet was to cut as many costs as he could, try to clean up the code with a lean team, and kinda re-emerge as the"everything app" like WeChat, and he'd be sitting pretty.



But then he also made really poor decisions based on ideology, chased away advertisers and users, and has now kinda locked himself in this downward spiral. The more costs he cuts, the worse the site gets. But without cuts, he'd be dumping tens of billions a year in it. So he's saved a lot of money, but has devalued the sight so much it's almost become a complete write-off.

[iggy_oi]

Originally Posted by nik-

I don't like cringe comedy

Who said it was funny? I consider it to be more of a performance art retelling of the movie requiem for a dream only they’ve replaced heroin with Musk.

[chemgear]

I mean it's like taking a dare from somebody to get healthier by losing weight. Then deciding to use a cleaver to cut off your thumb to lose a little bit of weight. Then you cut off your fingers, hand, toe and feet. Then everybody telling you that you're bleeding everywhere and that cutting off all your digits and limbs didn't make you healthier.

But you still think that you are winning.

[activeStick]

Originally Posted by mrkajz44

This is happening to me too. Doesn't this already happen for Instagram and Facebook? You only have very limited access unless you login, no?

Yup, I don't have IG and so can only view the post shared and nothing more after a few minutes. Sometimes, I can't even view the post shared.

[MarchHare]

[Slava]

Meta is launching "threads" on July 6, and I think it's a dagger for Twitter. Most of the other alternatives have had some issues. I never did get a bluesky invite, so I can't really say about them, but I think this Meta offering is probably going to be impactful.

[Sr. Mints]

Originally Posted by Slava

Meta is launching "threads" on July 6, and I think it's a dagger for Twitter. Most of the other alternatives have had some issues. I never did get a bluesky invite, so I can't really say about them, but I think this Meta offering is probably going to be impactful.

Phew, I wasn't the only one

[photon]

"On Friday afternoon, Twitter decided to block unregistered, signed-out users, from seeing public tweets. That meant that for Google's normal crawling purposes, it was unable to see some of these tweets. It seems that Google now has about 52% fewer Twitter URLs in its index today than it had on Friday, just a few days later.
...
On Friday, June 30th at about 1pm ET, Twitter had 471 million URLs indexed in Google Search according to this site command
...
Then this morning, I grabbed another screenshot, and it was down now to 227 million URLs indexed, that is about 52% less than what was indexed on Friday:"

https://www.seroundtable.com/twitter...rop-35648.html

[GGG]

Originally Posted by MoneyGuy

If I didn’t know better I’d say that Musk wants Twitter to go under, but why pay $44 billion for the opportunity? I think he bought Twitter to support Trump but destroying it isn’t helping his cause. I’m confused.

I always thought that he was like the early media barons who bought media to control messaging to influence the public and politicians to support their interests. Twitter appeared to fit very well into this world. Get it close to break even but never worry about profitability.

If he is willing to lose unlimited money as he transforms it then the break it to change it model might end up working. I think it ultimately fails because disrupting your own monopoly doesn’t seem that wise.

But what he accomplished is he still has is major media using Twitter as a distribution platform while he has biased the algorithm/ had a self selected paid user base that gets favourable treatment which reflects his corprotist interests. Effectively he has a right wing propaganda tool used by regular people.

Now why he keeps trying to wreck that I don’t know.

[chemgear]

https://twitter.com/user/status/1676021062923067392

[Locke]

Lol!

[DoubleK]

Originally Posted by Slava

Meta is launching "threads" on July 6, and I think it's a dagger for Twitter. Most of the other alternatives have had some issues. I never did get a bluesky invite, so I can't really say about them, but I think this Meta offering is probably going to be impactful.

Is blue sky any good?

Anyone have an invite?

[Locke]

Originally Posted by DoubleK

Is blue sky any good?

Anyone have an invite?

Well....searching way, way back as I recall the only appropriate answer to ane query regarding 'the sky is blue' is:

"The C is Red."

[Slava]

Originally Posted by DoubleK

Is blue sky any good?

Anyone have an invite?

Honestly, I have no idea. It seems to be where all the cool kids are going though. Maybe Threads will be the place to be though?

[Fuzz]

Originally Posted by Slava

Honestly, I have no idea. It seems to be where all the cool kids are going though. Maybe Threads will be the place to be though?

I hope not. Handing another market to Meta is not a good idea. This is an opportunity for another entrant to maintain competition.

[Slava]

I understand what you're saying there, but all the other entrants can't seem to figure it out. I have Substack which has a section called "notes", which is close to Twitter...but there's not enough uptake. Part of what makes Twitter good (if you think it's good, and I realise not everyone does) is the network effects. For a while it was ubiquitous, or close to. I think that while Zuckerberg and how they run Meta has significant governance issues, they could gather an impressive network of people and make Threads quite useful.

[Fuzz]

Up until now, Twitter mostly still worked so it was hard for another entrant to take over. With it useless I think there is a lot of demand for something else, and I'd hope corporations are thinking long and hard about what they do. Another closed network, or something like Mastodon or Bluesky where you aren't at the whims of a super billionaire who just gives you a new headache every 3 months.

And how many times has Zuckerburg been called before congress? How many privacy issues does that company have?

I dunno, just because something is easy doesn't mean it is good.

[JohnnyB]

Threads, Blue Sky, Mastodon... I don't really want a new social network as much as I just want to control and own my social graphs across any platform I go to. It's too annoying moving to new platforms and starting afresh. Creators I'm sure would like that too, but platforms don't because it would reduce their network effect advantages and make them just compete on their product/service offerings. Some day though, hopefully we get there.

[Mr.Coffee]

Is this the worst use of $40Billion in history? I am thinking so and is a fantastic working example of why wealth should not be so aggregated into the hands of so few. This is a shining example society should look to when it comes to installing caps on wealth. Yes, it may be arbitrary but personally I do not see the need for anyone to have in excess of $1 Billion. Call it $2 Billion or whatever, but fact is this moron used his personal wealth to destroy what otherwise was a useful journalistic tool. That remaining $39 or $38 Billion could have been used in so many better ways if there was such a cap.

[Slava]

Originally Posted by Mr.Coffee

Is this the worst use of $40Billion in history? I am thinking so and is a fantastic working example of why wealth should not be so aggregated into the hands of so few. This is a shining example society should look to when it comes to installing caps on wealth. Yes, it may be arbitrary but personally I do not see the need for anyone to have in excess of $1 Billion. Call it $2 Billion or whatever, but fact is this moron used his personal wealth to destroy what otherwise was a useful journalistic tool. That remaining $39 or $38 Billion could have been used in so many better ways if there was such a cap.

While I get that, I'm also against a cap on wealth. This is probably a conversation for a different thread though.